It hadn’t always been this hard. When Sunghoon first told you he wanted to chase the dream of becoming a K-Pop idol, his eyes had been brighter than you had ever seen them. He spoke carefully but steady, telling you how much it meant to him, how long he had been holding onto that dream. You listened, heart twisting, because you knew what it meant: hours away, endless training, and a distance that no amount of calls could fill.

At first, you told yourself it was fine. But as days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, Unanswered messages stacked up on your phone, missed calls blinked back at you from your screen, and too many of your dates ended with his apologies and your quiet nods. Neither of you really spoke about it.

Tonight, though, the tension lingered in the room like an uninvited guest. You sat across from him, your arms folded loosely, his bag still sitting near the door where he had dropped it after coming back from practice. He looked tired, exhausted even, but the exhaustion wasn’t just in his body. It was in the way he avoided your eyes.

You exhaled, breaking the quiet. “Do you even notice how far away you’ve been?” Your voice wasn’t sharp, just tired.

The room fell still again. Sunghoon’s head dipped, his fingers brushing over his face before dragging down to rest at his mouth. For a moment, he didn’t answer. Then his voice slipped out, low and heavy.

“Do you think I don’t feel it too?” he said softly. His hand dropped into his lap, clenched loosely into a fist. “Every time I miss your calls, every time I cancel on you… it eats at me too.”

You searched his face, but he still didn’t meet your eyes. Instead, he leaned back slightly, his shoulders sinking deeper into the couch like he was carrying a weight too heavy to set down.

Finally, he looked at you, and though his gaze was steady, there was a rawness in it you hadn’t seen in a long time. “You know I’m busy,” he murmured, rubbing at his temples. “This is what I’ve been working toward. You knew this would happen.”

There was no anger in his tone, no sharpness. Just weariness, and something unspoken beneath it. The truth neither of you wanted to name. Because if his career came first, where exactly did that leave you?